The transformational issue in this campaign might not be healthcare, or the economy, or immigration, but Bain Capital, says the New York Times – in a surprised acknowledgment that the private equity firm that Mitt Romney helped found is proving to be a powerful weapon against him.

The Bain attacks are, so far, the most controversial Obama campaign strategy, derided by many Democratic pros and insiders. Theirs is a simple analysis: populist attacks seldom work for the Democrats (curiously, they tend to work well for the Republicans); private equity is an issue too complicated to gain lasting attention; it's silly to offend the financial community, which provides so much support to the Democrats, over a low-return issue.

Indeed, part of the great generational shift of party identification and loyalty has been the movement of the Republican party away from Wall Street and to social interest groups, and the movement of the Democrats from their traditional labor roots to a new home among the financial Medicis. In ways large and small, the Democrats, during the historic Clinton-led stockmarket surge, became the party of Goldman Sachs. Obama may have incurred the wrath of rich (and wakadoo) Republican outliers – the Koch brothers, for instance – but (at least, up until now) he and the Democratic party have had a firm hold on that once rock-ribbed Republican club, the eastern financial establishment.

And while this new alignment gave the Democrats vast resources, it also, in ways large and small, confused its message. The Democrats became the snob party, the haughty party, the yuppie party, while the Republicans, remarkably, became the salt-of-the-earth lot. George Bush, from as rock-ribbed a family as anyone has ever been, somehow turned into an everyman.

Part of the Democrats' inability to make the financial meltdown its own issue is caused by its own deep ambivalence and profound conflict of interest when it comes to the financial industry: many senior administration officials expect to leave office and get jobs, and make personal fortunes, in the institutions that might otherwise be blamed, and even indicted, for the present mess.

But then, in another staggering reversal, the Republicans end up with Mitt Romney – Mitt Romney! – a figure straight out of the Republicans' long-ago, country-club, preppy, pink-pants, stockbroker era, as their certain nominee. Mitt Romney is the unreconstructed George Bush.

Romney is such a vivid caricature that he resets the cultural timeline of both parties. We're back before it all got confused – before the great liquidity that began in the 1980s made a significant part of the voting public believe their self-interest lay in asset appreciation (of real estate, stocks, options, shadow equity, art, whatever).

Before that – say, before Ronald Reagan – the world was a much simpler place. There was a rarified group (the 1%, if you will) that we understood to represent capital; and the rest of us, who were not owners and whose future who was not tied to asset appreciation, who got a pay check.

One of the notable developments of the modern postwar, 1950s, 60s, 70s era is the detente that had largely grown up between these two groups: capital got its fair reward and so did labor. Then, in the postmodern era, the balance dramatically shifted to capital. This happened in part because so many more people had come to believe, illusorily or not, that they were capital.

But suddenly, the music stopped and, in something of a sight gag, Mitt Romney was left standing. There can hardly be a more perfect reminder than Romney and Bain of the stark divide between capital and the rest of us. It is not even that they are so bad, but that it is just so hard to identify with them. Few people are ever going to confuse themselves with Mitt Romney.

When you personalize the story with Romney and Bain, it's easy to see that that a particular group of people make their money differently than the rest of us. There is really no disguising the paramount point about private equity – not least of all because private equity has never seen much reason to disguise it: its reason for being is exclusively to benefit its shareholders.

Indeed, after the great liquidity revolution, this became the operating principle of capital everywhere. We are in it for ourselves but, with a little hocus pocus, if we benefit, you will benefit, too. The rich get richer and so does everybody else – so it seemed.

Except, obviously, we now know that is not true. Only Mitt and friends are rich.

Saying as much, the Obama-led attacks on Mitt and Bain can easily seem simplistic and crude and, also, upsetting to anyone who has a capital stake. This is why Cory Booker, ever-cultivating wealthy benefactors (and being cultivated by them, too), is sickened by the reductiveness of it all, and why Mitt Romney is raising so much cash. This is turning the presidential election into a referendum on the financial establishment and its worldview … and its personality, its vibe, and its look.

And what if it works? What if Romney, hopelessly characterized as out-of-step with the modern world, loses? What if Bain becomes a famous punchline? Can there really be a reset? What if Obama, a muddle of conflicting messages, successfully argues the point he, and more and more of the world, seem to be groping for: the brief elevation of shareholder interest above all else is over. That anomalous moment in history has passed. Now, we need to return to a new, old model of stakeholders, wherein everybody's interest, employees, vendors, community, as well as shareholders, are represented.

Somewhere in this argument, Mitt Romney becomes a curious relic of our weird and disappearing time.